Place cells are a fundamental component of the rodent navigational system. One intriguing implication of place cells is that humans, by extension, have "map-like" (or GPS-like) knowledge that we use to represent space. Here, we review both behavioral and neural studies of human navigation, suggesting that how we process visual information forms a critical component of how we represent space. Th...

Attractor neural network theory has been proposed as a theory for long-term memory. Recent studies of hippocampal place cells, including a study by Leutgeb et al. in this issue of Neuron, address the potential role of attractor dynamics in the formation of hippocampal representations of spatial maps.

The identification of 'place cells' in the hippocampus has suggested a special role for this brain structure in spatial mapping, but other studies have indicated a more general role in memory. New findings on place cells point the way towards a reconciliation of the mapping and memory views.

This paper shows how to stably merge two sequences A and B of sizes m and n, m n, respectively, with O…m ‡ n† assignments, O…m log…n=m ‡ 1†† comparisons and using only a constant amount of additional space. This result matches all known lower bounds and closes an open problem posed by Dudzinski and Dydek in 1981. Our algorithm is based on the unstable algorithm of Mannila and Ukkonen. All techn...

The hippocampus has long been associated with navigation and spatial representations, but it has been difficult to link directly the neurophysiological correlates of hippocampal place cells with navigational planning and action. In recent years, large-scale population recordings of place cells have revealed that spatial sequences are stored and activated in ways that may support navigational st...

Here, cosmology is obtained from the variable gravitational constant G ∝ φ with φ(x) being a scalar and its fluctuations around the ground state. The gravitational action contains Einstein-Hilbert like term with variable G, kinetic energy and self-interaction potential for φ(x). Two phase transitions take place in this model. The first one takes place at the GUT (grand unified theory) scale ∼ 2...